System Development

Chief designer, CDIS

CDIS is an air traffic information system for the London Terminal Control Centre at West Drayton. It was one of the earliest large scale industrial uses of formal methods to specify and design software, and CDIS remains one of the largest operational systems built using formal methods. It is a distributed system with nearly 100 computers running about 200KLOC of code. It has a highly resilient high performance architecture with hardware fault tolerance in the central processor, workstations and communications infrastructure.

CDIS was integrated smoothly into the operational environment and has given excellent service to its users since it went operational in 1993. It had a ten-year warranty against category 1 defects and has proved extremely reliable in service. Measured defects of all kinds in the first 16 months from delivery were around 0.75 per KLOC, far better than industry norms at the time.

Requirements Engineering

Consultancy and training

Requirements engineering projects in air traffic control and aero engine development have applied REVEAL to elicit stakeholder needs and transform them into specifications to suppliers of systems and components. National Air Traffic Services and the US Federal Aviation Administration have both had requirements engineering training and consultancy in REVEAL.

Software Engineering

Consultancy

I have investigated the re-engineering and maintenance of a major operational system and planned a programme of sustainment using modern software engineering techniques.